


All's Right with the World

by innie



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse, WODEHOUSE P. G. - Works
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 09:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27848506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: "Good morning, sir," he said, not a note of reproach in his voice at the late hour; his un-auntliness was one of his most estimable qualities. "I trust you had a pleasant evening?""Whooping it up with Bickie, who's binding himself in the chains of matrimony. Willingly," I added, to allay his admirable tendency to snap into service for any of the young master's hapless friends.
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves & Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Comments: 20
Kudos: 39
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	All's Right with the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tibby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tibby/gifts), [GlassRain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassRain/gifts).



> Title from Robert Browning's _Pippa Passes_ , one of the pieces most frequently quoted by Wooster and Jeeves.
> 
> My thanks to my fantastic betas, eccentric_hat [on dw] and morbane [on dw], who really entered into the spirit of the thing.

_Tra-la-la_ , I warbled in my bath, and splashed a bit as I considered why singing in the bath was so satisfying. Commander Quackers was floating, as a wave took him, in a sou'-sou'westerly direction, but I made a long leg — the length of my bally limbs had to serve _some_ purpose — and snagged the spry fellow with my toes.

It couldn't simply be the acoustics of the room, the way tile seemed to amplify my voice; as faithful readers of these chronicles are aware, I'd sung in choirs and at my own dear piano and in a chorus of my fellow Drones, and I could command a far greater volume in those cases. Commander Quackers pondered too, beak to nose, and Jeeves broke in on our tête-à-tête with a breakfast tray. I set the dumb chum afloat again and reached for the coffee and carbohydrates. When offered sustenance prepared by Jeeves, B. Wooster has been known to fill both hands.

"Good morning, Jeeves," I said, considering how he appeared so silently and promptly, always starched and pressed, the perfect gentleman's personal gentleman.

"Good morning, sir," he said, not a note of reproach in his voice at the late hour; his un-auntliness was one of his most estimable qualities. "I trust you had a pleasant evening?" 

"Whooping it up with Bickie, who's binding himself in the chains of matrimony. Willingly," I added, to allay his admirable tendency to snap into service for any of the young master's hapless friends.

"My felicitations to the young gentleman, sir," he offered, adding just a soupçon of hot w. to the proceedings, proving he could gauge the bath's temperature by eye alone. "Will you be lunching in?"

The tray had been light on the protein, for the lunching hour was almost upon us, and as I marmaladed a slice of t. I was glad to confirm that I was, with Bickie and Melody, the little woman.

I drifted from bath to piano by way of the boudoir, stepping into the togs Jeeves had laid out without a murmur. Once at the old ivories, I devoted myself to a little light music, having already, as it were, warmed up the pipes. Jeeves, I could hear between hearty choruses, was whipping up a veritable feast, and it did sound like he was appreciating the steady rhythm of the bass line the l. hand was laying down like stepping-stones whilst the r. had melodies to describe. The programme lasted me very nicely until the bell rang and Jeeves shimmered to the front door to welcome in our guests.

*

Melody, I am pleased to report, proved herself to be every inch the winner that Bickie had rapturously described, and any worries that might have lingered at the news that a pal was putting up the banns were dispelled posthaste. A pretty shrimp with dark curls and dark eyes and a smiling face, she admired the flat — Jeeves, I noted, had brought in a few extra pots of flowers and scattered the vases hither and yon with an unerring eye — and appreciated the meal, one of the most toothsome steak-and-kidney pies it has ever been my privilege to fork. Bickie looked like being on to a good thing.

We were taking our ease, swapping stories of our school days with refreshers in hand, when the bell went off again. Jeeves floated silently to the door, no doubt prepared to act as gatekeeper should a bounder of a cousin attempt to come ankling in.

But it was worse. It was Madeline Bassett, the biscuit-taker of all my fiancées, the one to whom, if you totted it all up as I once had, I had spent the most minutes bitterly engaged.

With no thought as to how it might strike a young gentleman who had been supposing her safely in Gloucestershire to see her pop up at his W1 flat, La Bassett sauntered in. No, not sauntered, for care sat upon her brow, as if some intrepid soul had let her in for a few home truths on fairies and their wee noses. Jeeves's eyebrow rose by as much as an eighth of an inch as he informed the room of the identity of its new occupant: "Miss Bassett, sir."

With one of my flashes of insight, I deduced that she had not yet become Lady Sidcup, a c. devoutly to be wished, and I wondered what on earth was taking Spode so long. Given his mammoth size and inversely proportional capacity for rational thought, I rather expected him simply to have hoisted the beasel over his gorilla shoulder and borne her to the altar ringed by his wretched black-shorted attendants.

"Oh, Bertie, I —" she bleated, before catching on that her audience was in fact double the expected size. Her eye passed smoothly over Bickie and widened when it got to Melody, sitting between us and listing rather Wooster-ward from her mirth. " _Melly!_ " Madeline gasped as if affronted.

For a golden-haired, limpid-eyed moppet built on strikingly petite lines, Madeline Bassett could loom. She loomed like the dickens. 

"Hullo, Maddy," Melody said evenly. I hypothesised that they'd been at Roedean together, but evidently not as bosom companions, the gowans both coarse and fine remaining unplucked. Madeline's eyes narrowed threateningly, but Melody was made of stuff too stern to be fazed. She was a thoroughly sound potato, if potatoes take unhurried sips of drinks.

With Madeline standing in the doorway like an actress frozen by stage-fright, Bickie collected his popsy and decamped; the happy pair were heading back to Sussex whence they had come to London to spread the good news and issue invitations for the event. I had promised to stand as Bickie's best man and, having met his intended, felt jolly good about turning up with a fish slice and a corker of a speech.

"Oh, Bertie!" Madeline said again after Jeeves had closed the door behind them, like that same actress who'd at last recognised her cue.

"Shall I pour you one?" I inquired, unable to remember if the poet Shelley, in addition to being a blasted vegetarian, had also been a teetotaller, or indeed whether Madeline had ceased to live her life by his dashed silly principles.

"How can one drink at a time such as this?" she asked with an expansive gesture. It did not take a Jeeves to recognise this as a rhetorical question, and one that did not apply to me; I took another swallow of the good stuff, feeling as irritable as a lion who'd been bearded by that persistent Daniel fellow in what ought to have been a sacrosanct den.

I also swallowed down a sigh. "Tell old Bertie what the trouble is," I invited as she sat and wiped her eyes with a delicate handkerchief. She launched into her tale of woe _in medias res_ , which I was prepared for, knowing as I did all about the _res_ that was her romantic travails. What had taken the bounce from her ounce was the difficulty in reconciling her ideas of her wedding — daisy-chains bedecked with dew, every school chum she'd ever made serving as a bridesmaid, and a groom with a face like _The Soul's Awakening_ waiting at the altar for her sylph-like radiance — with those of her abominable intended, who had so little romance in his simian soul that he considered the event to be just another step on the ladder of his political ambitions. She did not put it so baldly, of course, but we Woosters are deuced sharp at reading between the lines, and I could see that her distress was genuine.

Picking my words carefully so that she could not return to any fatheaded notion of my continued pining for her hand, or the rest of her, I intimated that perhaps Spode — "Lord Sidcup," she insisted — was occupied with other matters and could have no idea how upsetting his wishes were to her. "This is the man," I said, bravely imperilling my mortal soul by calling that fiend in human shape such, "who said he would cut himself into a thousand pieces to bring you a moment's happiness."

Bloodthirsty as any other delicately nurtured female, Madeline smiled at that. Before the smile could vanish — and well before more tears could be shed for my plight — I managed another burst of eloquence, speaking as persuasively as if I had a soapbox under my soles of the happiness she could grant her favourite failing fascist with a surprise visit. She departed in a cloud of perfume, moist eyes turning away from me to fix on whatever hideous visions now arose before them, and I closed the door behind her, satisfied with a good day's work. As Jeeves liked to say, all to do with the psychology of the individual.

*

"I say, Jeeves," I called out, and he materialised before me, ready to perform any service the young master might deem needful.

"Yes, sir?"

"Did you hear any of what Madeline was gnashing her teeth over?"

"No, sir. The matter looked to be both personal and delicate, and so I made myself scarce so that you could minister to the young lady."

Leaving Madeline alone with one she thought of as her faithful swain was rather fraught with peril, swain-wise, but it had turned out well and I could not fault his chivalry. "This psychology of the individual wheeze is hot stuff, Jeeves. With it, even I was able to patch up the rift between Miss Bassett and her enormous intended, and soon we shall hear their wedding bells ring out."

"Very good, sir," Jeeves said politely, and though there was no doubt in his voice, there was a note that clanged rather. He had turned aside to put the drinks cart back in order, and his head bulged in the back with brains. 

"What is it, Jeeves? Speak freely," I encouraged.

Still, this great man hesitated, but I could not name an item that I had brought into the flat to which he had objected. "Sir," he said, and paused, though his eyes gleamed intelligently, as was their wont. "You have been so gratifyingly appreciative of the small aid I have offered —"

"Small nothing!" I interjected. "Laid out end to end, the females from whom you have saved me would stretch from —"

You could have knocked me down with a feather when he interrupted me right back. "No, sir, that is my objection. I fear that you have elevated my efforts to such a level that you do not appreciate your own hand in them."

"Eh?" The mind reeled. Jeeves could not haul me out of the soup if I did not land in it with such regularity, of course, but his tone did not indicate that such was the sentiment he wished to impart.

He nearly smiled then, looking like a stuffed frog benevolently contemplating a favourite grandson. "I did overhear one portion of your earlier conversation," he said, which was no surprise, for the flat had not the proportions of a country pile, and in any case I was as an open book to him. "You were very flatteringly wondering how it was that my name and reputation were not known to you before I entered your employment."

"That's true!" I said, remembering now. Melody had praised the décor and the meal, both of which I properly credited to Jeeves before expounding on his other sterling characteristics. "Even if you'd only aided the y.m. as a matter of course in your employment, still, you've helped nearly every friend and acquaintance and relation of mine, many more than once. The name of Bingo Little springs readily to the mind. How _have_ you so sedulously evaded the spotlight, Jeeves?"

"There was no spotlight, sir, for none had requested my assistance before."

"More fools they," I said. "Did they miss your brain-bulge?"

Jeeves's carved features went from impressive to fond. "It is a rare master who troubles himself with what his valet does outside the scope of his duties, let alone what said valet thinks."

How odd. Hearing what the brainiest cove I knew thought about had always been reassuring to me, as it was inevitably on a much grander scale than the problems I brought him like a cat that deposited dead birds on his human's pillow. Still, this diffidence was unsettling, and I cast about for a way to prove to him how much good he had done. "What are you whiling away your leisure hours with just now?" I asked.

If Jeeves ever let his puzzlement show, that was the moment; for future reference, it involved but a minute pursing of the lips. "Essays on the parallels between the philosopher Spinoza's conception of religion and that of the Hindu _Vedas_ , which arose centuries ago in India," he said. I should have known his old pal Spinoza would figure in somehow.

"A mind capable of enjoying _that_ is the mind I want guiding me from soup to nuts," I said triumphantly.

"I fear I have not spoken plainly enough, sir. It is the atmosphere you create, with your kindness and readiness to aid a friend, that allows me to think through the problems you set before me."

I worked that one through, and at the end of a few minutes' cogitation found myself feeling warm and flustered. "I say, Jeeves!" I protested faintly.

"That and the music you make, which I find quite effective as an aid to deep thought."

It had to be merely a graceful way to let me hide my blushes, but I seized it gladly. "Any particular requests?" I asked, settling once again before the piano.

"No, sir," he said, and shimmered to the doorway. "Thank you, sir."


End file.
